Column: Classroom etiquette

When you are in college, you find that the students tend to adopt a certain type of understanding, such as holding the door for the person behind you when a herd of students are barrelling through, either going to or returning from class.

Or the traditional Muskie “hello” that almost everyone uses, the understanding that we’re all Muskies searching for that pearl of a degree that is nestled within a four-year college career.

However, there is an understanding that I know most upperclassmen are aware of, yet the underclassmen don’t seem to have a firm grasp on just yet. It is the understanding that the desk you sit at during the first week of classes is now deemed “your seat” for the remainder of the semester.

Everyone had that one-week window of opportunity to switch their seat at the very beginning of the semester. When week two came rolling about, that was it. That is your seat for the rest of the semester, whether you like it or not.

I don’t think this is a terribly difficult thing to remember and acknowledge, yet I am still finding myself asking someone to get out of my seat or having to find a new temporary seat altogether.

Yeah, everyone who knows me knows I am type “A” in terms of personality, thus I want things neat, orderly, and the way they are supposed to be. Thus, I want MY seat, the seat I chose at the beginning of the semester and would like to sit in for the remainder of it.

This may seem like a petty complaint, but I know for a fact I’m not the only one experiencing this annoyance. Friends within my classes have looked at me with angry facial expressions, commenting to me how rude it is that someone is sitting in their seat.

Maybe it is an old Muskie rule, and perhaps it is dying, but until the upperclassmen generation has graduated, give us the respect all students deserve and sit where you should be sitting, which is not in OUR seats.